NEW YORK (AP) — Achieving the title of youngest driver to win a Formula One World Championship is really hard. Or having the most ascents of Mount Everest. But what about most soda cans crushed with your feet in a minute?
Guinness World Records is celebrating its 70th anniversary by giving regular folks a way to get into a list of their famous accomplishments — offering some unclaimed potential titles and creating an online quiz to help readers match personality types to possible records.
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Married couple Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, both retired teachers, pose for a photo at their home in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. The couple is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest married couple in the world, because of their combined ages. They have been married for 79 years. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Married couple Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, both retired teachers, pose for a photo at their home in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. The couple is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest married couple in the world, because of their combined ages. They have been married for 79 years. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Seiichi Sano, an 89-year-old Japanese man, rides a wave at Katase Nishihama Beach, Thursday, March 30, 2023, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo. Sano, who turns 90 later this year, has been recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest male to surf. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Assamese dancers in traditional attire perform as they attempt Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category in Guwahati, India, Friday, April 14, 2023. Around 11,000 Bihu dancers and musicians performed together to set a new record for Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category today. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Andy Glass, left, and Illusionist Antonio Diaz "El Mago Pop" presented with the Guinness World Record for highest weekly gross for a solo show on Broadway at The Barrymore Theatre on Friday, June 14, 2024, in New York. (Photo by CJ Rivera/Invision/AP)
Do you stay calm and pace yourself? Or are you all about getting it done quickly? Answers to five questions like that online lead to world record options to attempt — like most eggs stacked in one minute or farthest distance bottle flip.
There's also a list of 70 unclaimed titles, like fastest time to make a burrito, longest marathon playing air guitar and most anchovies eaten in a minute. They're sorted by headings: speed, power, precision, passion, patience, one for under-16s and another with a friend or pet, like most items caught by a cat in a minute.
“I am completely of the opinion that we’re all amazing in our own way, it’s just discovering what that thing is and celebrating it,” says Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday. “I want to see kids in the same book as Usain Bolt.”
First published in 1955, the annual book — initially conceived to settle pub arguments — has developed into an international phenomenon, selling 155 million copies in more than 40 languages. The publication itself is listed as the world’s bestselling copyrighted book.
It started when Sir Hugh Beaver, then managing director of the Guinness Brewery, was invited to go game bird hunting in Ireland. He and his companions soon began to squabble over which was Europe’s fastest game bird. There was no quick way to solve the dispute.
Beaver dreamed up a pamphlet that could be sold to pubs alongside barrels of Guinness stout. He asked twins Norris and Ross McWhirter, who were fact-finding researchers, to compile something that would be different from the day’s encyclopedias, which were dry and very highly academic.
Glenday has been in charge of the books since the 50th anniversary and has been democratizing the record-keeping, opening up entries for things like the most sweaters worn and the loudest burp. He believes striving for goals is an innately human thing.
“The more open and free it is to everyone to have a go, I think the more we all collectively benefit,” he says. “It’s not like there’s a piece of cake that’s going to be eaten and it’s all gone. We can just keep adding and adding.”
Unlike the Olympics, which decides what is and what is not a proper sport, Guinness World Records embraces all kinds of achievement, as long as they're meaningful, interesting and a degree of effort has been made. “Otherwise, it’s official, but it’s not amazing. And we have to be officially amazing,” he says.
Guinness World Records is where you'll find Ashrita Furman of New York City, who jumped the 1,899 steps of the CN Tower in Ontario, Canada, on a pogo stick in a record time of 57 minutes and 51 seconds.
“He is a real athlete,” says Glenday. “Who else is celebrating these people and accrediting them and validating their amazing thing? No one, apart from us. So I can see why after 70 years we’re still relevant.”
To those critics who say Glenday is making a mistake by elevating, for instance, the men’s high jump world record holder in the same pages as the fastest person to ever push an orange for one mile using their nose, he disagrees. Both require concentration, training and dedication.
“To me, it is the same discipline, the same mindset. It's just society’s been sort of programmed to think one is more impressive than the other.”
Married couple Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, both retired teachers, pose for a photo at their home in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. The couple is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest married couple in the world, because of their combined ages. They have been married for 79 years. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Seiichi Sano, an 89-year-old Japanese man, rides a wave at Katase Nishihama Beach, Thursday, March 30, 2023, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo. Sano, who turns 90 later this year, has been recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest male to surf. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Assamese dancers in traditional attire perform as they attempt Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category in Guwahati, India, Friday, April 14, 2023. Around 11,000 Bihu dancers and musicians performed together to set a new record for Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category today. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Andy Glass, left, and Illusionist Antonio Diaz "El Mago Pop" presented with the Guinness World Record for highest weekly gross for a solo show on Broadway at The Barrymore Theatre on Friday, June 14, 2024, in New York. (Photo by CJ Rivera/Invision/AP)
BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.
It's called, simply, “Are You Dead?"
In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).
It's simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I've fallen, and I can't get up!”
Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers' attitude that loneliness and safety aren't just Chinese issues.
“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app's developers, said Thursday.
Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It's unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you're still alive.”
Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.
Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation's culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.
Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?' is very interesting,” Chen said.
Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.
Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She's not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.
"I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found," said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”
While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.
“Some netizens say that the 'Are you dead?' greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. ""It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app."
The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app's immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”
Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app's name sparked public pressure.
“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”
A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could "serve more solo dwellers globally.”
Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.
The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.
Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.
The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
